Wake Up To Politics - September 1, 2015
Wake Up To Politics - September 1, 2015
To read today's edition of Wake Up To Politics in a PDF format, click here. Continue reading to find the text of the Wake Up in the body of the email!
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
434 Days Until Election DayIt's Tuesday, September 1, 2015, I'm Gabe Fleisher for this Happy September edition of Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
To send me questions, comments, tips, new subscribers, and more: email me at wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com. To learn more about WUTP or subscribe, visit the site: wakeuptopolitics.com, or read my tweets and follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Wakeup2Politics or read stories on Wake Up To Politics by clicking the media logos at the bottom.
White House Watch
- The President’s Schedule President Obama will spend Day 2 of his Alaska trip in the Seward area.
- At 12 PM, the President will hike to Exit Glacier in Seward.
- At 3:50 PM, he will take part in a boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park.
- Both outdoor experiences will give Obama a chance to “view the effects of climate change firsthand”.
- Also today, President Obama will tape an episode of NBC’s “Running Wild with Bear Grylls,” a show where survivalist Bear Grylls takes celebrities into the wild to complete different tasks. According to NBC, Grylls will give the President “a crash course in survival techniques” during the episode, which will air later this year.
- Move Over, McKinley: Obama Restores Native “Denali” Name to America’s Tallest Mountain Ahead of the President’s Alaska visit, the Obama Administration formally changed the name of Mt. McKinley, one of the state’s landmarks and the highest peak in North America, to Mt. Denali, the name favored by Alaskan natives.
- The name change, long sought by Alaskans but held off for decades by Ohioans (President William McKinley, the mountain’s former namesake, hailed from Ohio), was made official Friday with an order from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
- Jewell has jurisdiction due to the mountain’s location at Denali National Park, which has been named for the Koyukon Athabaskan word meaning “the Great (or High) One” since 1975.
- A number of Ohio politicians attacked Obama’s decision, including the state’s governor and senators. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, also a representative of Ohio, said he was “deeply disappointed.” Boehner’s statement said, “There is a reason President McKinley’s name has served atop the highest peak in North America for more than 100 years, and that is because it is a testament to his great legacy,” before citing McKinley’s service in the Civil War and as a congressman and governor of Ohio, as well as his leadership during the Spanish-American War, which McKinley presided over.
- Meanwhile, many Alaskan leaders praised the name change; Sen. Lisa Murkowski released a video supporting the decision.
- Adding insult to injury for McKinley fans: This is not the first time the 25th President has been snubbed; he used to grace the $500 bill, which has been out of circulation since 1934. And…Sunday is the 106th anniversary of his assassination
- History Lesson Natives have long called the peak “Denali,” but in 1896, a New Hampshire-born gold prospector traveled to the mountain, and took it upon himself to name it Mount McKinley, a show of support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley. In 1917, the name became official with the “Act to establish the Mount McKinley National Park in the territory of Alaska,” which was passed by Congress and signed by President Woodrow Wilson.
- Still, though, many locals referred to the mountain as Denali, and in 1975, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the peak’s name to Denali. That same year, the Alaskan Legislature requested the U.S. Board on Geographic Names do the same, a request not followed on Jewell’s order 40 years later.
- Since 1975, congressional attempts to change the mountain’s name have all been stopped by Ohio’s congressional delegation, especially Rep. Ralph Regula, who represented McKinley’s hometown of Canton, even after President Jimmy Carter signed into law a bill renaming the national park the mountain was located in from McKinley National Park to Denali National Park and Preserve.
2016 Central
- State Department Releases Thousands of Emails from Clinton’s Personal Email The State Department released over 7,000 emails Hillary Clinton sent or received while Secretary of State on Monday night, the largest batch of her emails yet.
- Of the 7,000, the department redacted content from about 150 that contained classified material – all of which were sent through Clinton’s private email system, therefore making the classified emails susceptible to hacking. The emails reveal all kinds of things – many are mundane, but others are funny and filled with gossip, politics, or personal back-and-forth.
- “21 Hillary Clinton emails you must read” (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/hillary-clinton-2016-emails-must-read-213207) and the political side of the Clinton emails (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/clintonemail-batch4-213164), both from Politico.
- A look at some of the redacted emails (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-batch-of-clinton-e-mails-due-monday-minus-150-deemed-classified/2015/08/31/dcbdcbbc-501e-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202) and other key emails (http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/read-hillary-clinton-email/) from the Washington Post
- Or…look through the emails yourself! Here is the link for the State Department’s page on the emails released last night: https://foia.state.gov/Search/Results.aspx?collection=Clinton_Email_august_Release. Go to a random page (1-219), and click on a random email and see if anything interesting comes of it. Repeat as many times as you want, and send me your favorites!
- I did that last night, and my favorite was a March 8, 2010 email sent from Lauren Jiloty, a special assistant to the Secretary of State, to Clinton, with no text in the body of the email. The subject line stated, “Today is [redacted] birthday.” Naturally I was curious who’s birthday it could have been, and why that would have been redacted, so I looked up a list of March 8 birthdays. Possibilities for the classified birthday boy/girl: former Sen. George Allen, former Rep. Jim Chapman, First Lady Hannah Van Buren, Secretary of State Simon Cameron, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and conjoined twins Lucio and Simplico Godina, all of whom have a March 8 birthday. Who was it? The world may never know…(but I’m placing my bet on Lucio and Simplico)
Question of the Day
- Today’s Question Presidential candidate Rick Santorum will complete the “Full Grassley” tour of Iowa today – meaning he has visited each of the state’s 99 counties. The tour, which Santorum also completed in 2012, is named for Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has visited all 99 each of the 34 year he’s served in the Senate.
- The county Santorum chose to be his 99th – which he visits today – is Lyon County, which gave him the highest percentage of the vote of any Iowa county in the 2012 caucuses.
- Today’s Trivia Question: Who was Lyon County named for?
- If you’re new to Wake Up To Politics or forgot over the summer, almost every day, I publish a trivia question in this column. If you email me (wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com) with the correct answer before midnight tonight, your name will appear with the answer to the question in tomorrow’s edition of Wake Up To Politics. I also post each day’s trivia question on Facebook and Twitter, so you can answer there as well by commenting/replying on my post/tweet.
- Good luck!
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